
After being jilted for another, a woman sends her lover's old letters to the new fiancée and looks forward to the reaction. But when she spots her old lover's glove left behind, she has a change of heart and repents.

Two families, abolitionist Northerners the Stonemans and Southern landowners the Camerons, intertwine. When Confederate colonel Ben Cameron is captured in battle, nurse Elsie Stoneman petitions for his pardon. In Reconstruction-era South Carolina, Cameron founds the Ku Klux Klan, battling Elsie's congressman father and his African-American protégé, Silas Lynch.

During the American Revolution, a young soldier carrying a crucial message to General Washington is spotted and pursued by a group of enemy soldiers. He takes refuge with a civilian family, but is soon detected. The family and their neighbors must then make plans to see that the important message gets through after all.

The story of a poor young woman, separated by prejudice from her husband and baby, is interwoven with tales of intolerance from throughout history.

A teenage orphan (who believes herself to be "hoodooed") is taken in by a childless couple and quickly falls for the boy next door; Her luck seems to have changed. But the idyll is broken up after a trip to the movies-- It seems the 'hoodoo' has returned after she tries to replicate what she'd seen on the screen.

Agnes, a singer in a country church, is practicing one day when a vaudeville manager hears her and offers her a job. Over the objections of the curate who loves her, she accepts the offer and goes to the city. Later the curate goes to hear Agnes perform and, fearing that her soul is being corrupted by show business, he asks her to return to the small town with him. When she refuses, he is prepared to kill her in order to protect the purity of her soul. This brings about her change of heart, and together they return to the little church.

Two lovers elope and expect to be pursued by her father. But the clever father has tricked them into running off, and celebrates their wedding when they return home.

John Howard Payne leaves home and begins a career in the theater. Despite encouragement from his mother and his sweetheart, Payne begins leading a life of dissolute habits, which soon leads to ruin and misery. In deep despair, he recalls better days, and writes a song that later provides inspiration to several others in their own times of need.

Two young girls are sent away to live with their uncle, which sets off a chain of events resulting in an Indian attack on the town.

A teenage girl lives with two grizzly bears in a cave in the California Sierras and plays with rabbits and birds. When gambler Jim Hamilton and his mistress try to interest wealthy Bob Jordan in purchasing an abandoned mine in the Sierras, Jordan, mistakes the girl clothed in leaves and feathers for an animal, shoots her in the arm.

Sisters guarding their house from a burglar set upon stealing their daddy's money.

Two business partners pursue the same woman. She accepts the marriage proposal of the irresponsible partner, much to her later regret. He squanders money on gambling, as his interest in her gradually wanes. One day after losing the company money in a card game, he decides to commit suicide. He telephones his wife from the office, as he puts a revolver near his head. The wife tries to keep him talking while the reliable business partner races to the office in an attempt to save his old friend. Will he make it in time?

A man recognizes the thief who had previously robbed him as one of the men involved in an unrelated mob shootout.

Before Tom departs for the city, he becomes engaged to Kate. She gives him half of her broken pendant cross, with the agreement that either can end the engagement by sending his or her half to the other. In a city boarding house, Tom is vamped by a flirtatious manicurist who learns of the agreement and sends Tom half a cross, pretending it is from Kate. Tom realizes he has been tricked and returns to the country and his fiancée.

In the 7th-century B.C., the Assyrians storm the walls of the Jewish city of Bethulia, leaving its people frightened and ready to hand their homes over to the invaders. As the Assyrians close in, the citizens are cut off from the outside world, and they began to starve. Seeing her people's desperation, Jewish widow Judith poses as a harem worker, winning her entry into the Assyrian camp, where she plans to kill their general, Holofernes.